The conventional plastic trash bag, normally formed of thin, flexible, plastic, such as low density polyethylene, has come into widespread usage, both around the home and in trash pick-up services such as city garbage collections services. The widespread acceptance and use of such flexible plastic trash bags evidence their basic practicality notwithstanding the difficulty of filling the flexible and flaccid bags with trash.
One of the more common uses of the plastic trash bag, particularly in the larger sizes, is the collection of leaves, lawn and garden clippings and the like. The flexible bags are less than completely convenient in this type of environment and the prior art has seen the development of many types of holding devices for retaining the bags; and, particularly, the mouth thereof open in order to receive the debris, or trash to be put thereinto.
The following United States patents were turned up in a pre-examination search and illustrate the typical approaches taken by the prior art in solving this problem. U.S. Pat. No. 3,278,969 describes a foldable dust pan. U.S. Pat. No. 3,449,786 also describes a foldable dust pan that is slightly different in structure. U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,333 describes a sanitary scoop that is, in effect, a "pooper scooper", or sanitary scoop, that enables capturing canine defecation where required. U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,087 describes a relatively expensive and complicated collection receptacle involving a plurality of pieces for holding a plastic bag around a cylindrical container with a partial cylindrical scoop having substantially similar cylindrical configuration for dumping trash within the cylindrical container and any bag suspended therewithin. Such a structure would be very expensive and not be readily available to the ordinary homeowner because of the expense. Moreover, it is complex to assemble and not readily amenable to taking away a full bag of trash and emplacing a new empty bag thereon. U.S. Pat. No. 4,037,778 describes a universal bag support that has to be inserted deeply within the bag and comprises free standing, upright, bendable partitions that make difficult holding a conventional bag in place and requires too much effort to insert the side panels all the way to the bottom to protect the sides of the bag. U.S. Pat. No. 4,052,764 describes apparatus for stretching a bag over a box with a ramp to hold the bag open for sweeping the trash into the bag. There is no easy sweeping of the trash onto one planar side with a dumping option for dumping it into the bag as in this invention.
The last two patents turned up by the pre-examination search are probably the most pertinent and the last one cites the penultimate one. U.S. Pat. No. 4,193,157 is cited in U.S. Pat. No. 4,312,531 as having a plastic hoop inserted into the open mouth of the bag with a ramp provided in the outgoing extended relationship to the hoop for inward guiding of swept debris. The last patent, No. 4,312,531 also describes several other proposals for stabilizing plastic bags; such as, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,384,709; 3,915,329; 3,917,107; and 3,945,314. That patent also cites very early patents such as Nos. 112,727 and 1,167,782 for engaging mouths of bags to hold them open.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that none of the prior art has been totally satisfactory in providing an economical structure that facilitates sweeping leaves, trash, dirt onto a planar surface that can be simply stood up to dump the trash into a flexible container; that can be carried readily in a planar configuration with the sides folded together and that can be easily slipped into a thin storage position in a planar configuration when not in use.